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Look Back: Union Station, 1894
Date: 6/21/2012 Album ID: 824804
Photos by Post-Dispatch files and Missouri History Museum
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On Sept. 1, 1894, newspapers carried detailed traffic instructions for carriages approaching 18th and Market streets. No one would get through without a pass. The occasion was the grand opening of Union Station, the monument to St. Louis’ sense of itself as industrial powerhouse and national crossroads. Organizers printed 13,000 invitations, ran out and printed more. About 20,000 men and women, many in tails and gowns, jammed the Grand Hall and strutted the 606-foot-long midway to the tracks.
GRAND FROM THE BEGINNING: A festive crowd jams the Grand Hall of Union Station for its dedication on the evening of Sept. 1, 1894. For many decades, it was the nationÕs busiest train station. (Missouri History Museum)
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Passenger trains fill the tracks at Union Station in 1907. Two decades later, station managers enclosed and heated the midway (in foreground) leading to the tracks, to the great relief of waiting travelers. (Missouri History Museum)
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Travelers in their finery mill about the wide midway of Union Station in 1907. Back then, the midway was open-air, just like the train shed to the left. It was enclosed and heated during the 1920s. (Missouri History Museum)
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Interior of train shed at Union Station, Eighteenth and Market Streets. Photograph by Emil Boehl, ca. 1907. Missouri Historical Society Photographs and Prints Collections. PB 1028. N11334. Missouri History Museum
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A view from a blimp of the train shed and busy environs in 1923. The curving row of buildings in the foreground were for the old American Railway Express, forerunner of today's parcel services. (Post-Dispatch)
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Travelers crowd the enclosed midway on July 1, 1944. Note all the military personnel, whose movements during World War II boosted Union Station's business to 100,000 people on many days. (Post-Dispatch)
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Mother and child wait for a train during the 1940s. (Post-Dispatch)
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People check the board for arrivals and departures during the Christmas on Dec. 1, 1946. Within a few decades, the crowds had moved to Lambert-St. Louis International Airport. Post Dispatch files
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This scene of the station yard from December 1949 shows the transition from steam locomotives to newer, cleaner diesel-electrics. A Terminal Railroad Association switcher is moving a passenger train. To its right and left are Missouri Pacific locomotives, the old and new. (Post-Dispatch)
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Service personnel passing through Union Station returning to duty on Jan. 3, 1953. Cars and airplanes were making their inroads, but train travel was still the way to go in the early 1950s. (Post-Dispatch)
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By April 1958, the number of travelers by train had fallen sharply, as shown in this relatively quiet scene along the midway.
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Operators in the station control tower in 1958 direct trains by moving the remote levers for the switches on the many tracks into the passenger shed. Art Witman/Post-Dispatch
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Unused passenger cars site on a weed-choked siding on the west end of the station in 1971. That same year, Amtrak, a creation of Congress, began managing what was left of the passenger service offered by the nation's railroads. Rail executives were delighted to unload their empty trains. (Post-Dispatch)
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Railfans gather around the last Amtrak train from Union Station, the 9 a.m. run to Chicago on Oct. 31, 1978. Amtrak moved to a nearby temporary building, soon derided as Amshack. A permanent new station, east of Union Station for both buses and trains, finally opened in November 2008. (Post-Dispatch)
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On Jan. 24, 1987, balloons and confetti greet the 10 millionth visitors to Union Station's new life as a shopping and entertainment center. It reopened on Aug. 29, 1985 after a $140 million restoration that, among other things, cleared the old train shed of pigeons and cheap liquor bottles. (Post-Dispatch)
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The old midway, once packed with people waiting for trains, was filled by shoppers and tourists in this scene of Jan. 3, 1987. (Post-Dispatch)
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The noontime crowd at Union Station on Aug. 30, 1987. (Post-Dispatch)
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